


Surface Tension

by kaguneko (alittlecoco)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Fluff, INDEFINITE HIATUS, M/M, Mer!Levi, MerMay, im so sorry, near death experience (drowning)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-03 03:05:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10958349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlecoco/pseuds/kaguneko
Summary: Erwin takes an extended holiday back to the seaside cottage where he grew up.****INDEFINITE HIATUS****Before you read, please know that I am not actively writing eruri anymore and am unsure if/when I will be back to finish these wips. Ah~~ I do apologize.





	Surface Tension

**Author's Note:**

> Literal decades ago I read the book The Wanderer by Sharon Creech, right? I can’t recall a lick of the plot, but these lines have haunted me all those years: 
> 
> the sea the sea the sea  
> it rolls and rolls and calls to me  
> come in, it says, come in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

 

_Erwin remembered tales fishwives had spun about riptides when he was little, but the insistent tugging, the tearing at his heavy clothing from all sides wasn’t at all what he had imagined. He wondered if this was what had happened to the swimmer._

 

* * *

 

 

  
_October 14th, the previous autumn._

 

 

His phone had stopped vibrating with messages hours ago. There hadn’t been many. A few from Mike and Nanaba, one from Nile, and one, strangely enough, from the waifish intern they’d snagged that fall.

  
Erwin turned his phone off— and then turned it back on with a sigh that was echoed by the tired chime of the device rebooting. He might get an email and work, the firm, his office always scratched insistent at the back of his mind, leaving him restless. A foreign pressure expanded in his chest like a balloon, except it was spun of glass and it felt like if it exploded, the imaginary shrapnel that tore into his lungs would hurt. He might even bleed.

  
His liquor cabinet was well stocked from gifts over the years, and the assorted bottles glittered as pretty and cold as the stars out the window. Erwin ran a finger over a bottle of dark, vicious wine before skipping down to a bottle of whisky that Mike had given him for his birthday last year. It was still nearly full, with only two glasses missing from when he and Mike had broken into it just after he’d gifted it to Erwin. Erwin smiled at the memory while the pressure in his chest tightened around his lungs. He sighed a careful breath.

  
Erwin poured himself a glass and sat on his couch, elbows resting heavy on his knees. A hollow mimic of Mike’s voice rang in his head, wrapping around the words of his earlier texts.

  
_golden boy turns forty! happy fucking birthday, man!! youre looking sexy as ever tho, so don’t worry. mhmm ;)_ There had been a pause and then another vibration.  _ah, oops… nana also says happy birthday, old man. (her words, not mine) we still on for friday?_

  
Erwin had grinned and shot back, _You’re just glad you’re not the only one over 40 anymore, bastard. Yeah, we’re still on. And thanks, both of you :) Tell Nana to enjoy her youth while it lasts_.

  
Afterwards his phone had fallen deafeningly silent.

  
Forty. The Golden Boy turns forty, indeed. Erwin frowned and took a sip of the whisky. It was thick in his nose as it burned down his throat and the feel of it tugged at his memory. Something smokey and abrasive and golden like sunlight.

  
The burn of the whisky lessened the swelling in his chest, melted it into something smaller, but somehow all the more sharp. Erwin ignored it, cleared his throat, and took another sip. He closed his eyes, chasing the memory while he rolled the alcohol about with his tongue.

  
There was smoke. A campfire. Someone’s voice, warmer than the crackling flames, and sand soft against Erwin’s toes. The sun set hot on his shoulders even as the night crept in cold shadows on the breeze. Coaxing the memory into view was like reeling in bits of a spider’s web, so flimsy and fragile that pulling too hard would scatter it in the recesses of Erwin’s mind.

  
_Read me another. Please?_

  
A rusty laugh flickered to the surface. The sound of it made Erwin’s chest ache. _No, you read_ me _one_.

  
_Okay! What do you like best, Papa?_ But Erwin knew the answer before his memory supplied it.

  
_I like the ones about mermaids_.

 

Erwin blinked back against the memory, the swell in his chest growing dangerously tight, tethering him to reality. He took another one of those careful breaths and a rather large mouthful of whisky. It must have been—he paused, calculating—over a decade since he’d been to his father’s cottage. His last memory of it was just after his father had passed away and Erwin had packed up his belongings in cardboard boxes that seemed far too flimsy to hold an entire lifetime of memories.

  
He realized, with some surprise, that he missed the place. He wondered if he’d missed it all these years, just shoved into his own cardboard boxes amongst cobwebs in a corner of his heart. He took another mouthful of whisky. Maybe it was just that he missed what the cottage had once held, the books full of mysteries, the endless rolling of the sea crashing in through the open windows, and his father’s ready laughter.

  
Erwin dragged a hand down his face and booted up his laptop because he’d learned the hard way that it didn’t do to dwell on things long gone.

 

While he worked, the clock ticked past midnight, marking the end of his birthday, although Erwin didn’t notice until three a.m. when he passed out on top of his bedsheets, bones aching. The whisky lingering on his tongue haunted his dreams with campfires and by morning an idea had rooted itself in his brain that some tiny, wistful bit left of his heart didn't want to shove back amongst the cobwebs.

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
_Late May, the beginning of that summer._

 

 

Pulling off the highway into the rickety little town he’d grown up in was nothing short of tripping through time warp. It was a dreadful cliché, but all Erwin could think was that time had, in fact, ignored this seaside town while the world rushed on without it. He half-expected to see shadows of himself running down the sidewalk, tugging his father to the market with child-like excitement. The sensation unsettled him as he navigated narrow streets that weren’t entirely welcoming to cars, rolling by muscle memory towards his old address.

  
His father had owned a few acres of beachside property that he’d bought when he was a teenager, years before it was valuable. Erwin was well aware of the property’s worth now, with its private location and expanse of beach, but he didn’t _need_ to sell it, so he always told himself he’d rent it out for the summer. But then, he never did that either. So now Erwin was left staring at the blank windows with their chipped white trim, empty since his father died over a decade ago.

  
His thighs stuck to the leather seat of his car. He hadn’t rolled the windows down and sweat was beginning to trickle into the small of his back. It had been years since he’d heard the sea, and somehow it seemed cheap to catch diluted whiffs of the bitter salt and the roar of the waves mixed with the crunch of his tires while he drove. Now that he was here, though, really _here_ for the summer, he just sat and stared in the stuffy parked car. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but for some reason a dark, abandoned cottage wasn’t it.

  
That balloon around his lungs swelled. His fingers twitched to his phone where it rested in the console. The light on it blinked.

  
It was Mike. Erwin had anticipated a panicked flurry of messages from Nile, but his firm partner seemed to be holding up fine in his absence, or at least he was faking it convincingly.

  
_let me know when you make it, man. nana and i wanna plan a trip down when youre settled in! if were welcome, of course… i get it if this is some stoic midlife-crisis shit you need to do alone. just remember tattoos are permanent, erwin._

  
Erwin’s fingertips felt too large as he huffed and typed back, _Don’t be an idiot. I’d love to have you guys down. I just made it. Call you later, yeah?_ He pocketed his phone and tumbled out the door before he could over-think it again.

  
The wind and brine hit him with sharp, immediate blows, twinning around his limbs and ruffling his hair like it was punishing him for being away so long, nosing in to greet him. Erwin closed his eyes and nearly smiled.

 

  
The cottage was dusty, but the housekeeper he’d been paying over the years had done a decent enough job, and the plumbing and electric companies had left reassuring footprints though the dust. Erwin paused in the little living room attached to the kitchen. He hadn’t turned a light on yet and the house was unnaturally dark compared to the harsh sun and the white-blue of the afternoon sky. The cottage was still in the way that houses are when they’ve been empty too long and all touches of human warmth had long since bled away. Erwin’s sore heart told him what he wanted wasn’t in the little white cottage anymore, but he’d known that all along.

 

He hooked up the radio he’d brought and filled the silence with scratchy oldies, wiping thick layers of dust from his father’s bookshelves before he even took the plastic off the furniture.

 

 

Erwin waited until sunset that first day to pad down to the ocean. Every time he’d paused to wipe away sweat, his eyes strayed to the bay window in the living room. Through the yellowed curtains, Erwin could see clearly across the burnt expanse of lawn, over the hillock with its ruffling beachgrass, and down long, sloping shore to the water. When the sun began to sink, Erwin quietly left his shoes and socks in the mudroom, and crackled his way across the dry lawn. The oldies station floated after him through the open backdoor in a wailing guitar riff. Erwin caught the tune and hummed it back. He fancied the sand felt the same as it had when he was a kid.

  
Erwin paused when he was close enough to the waves that their spray dampened his face. The ocean wasn't as loud as he remembered, but it seemed impossibly larger, stretching on and on and _on_ in rippling waves stained rosy by the setting sun. He stood for a long time, until the tide licked his toes and the sea turned inky under the rising moon. The stars here were just as cold and pretty as the ones out his window back home, but they seemed a great deal closer.

 

 

  
The first week at the cottage was, frankly, a mess. Erwin’s fingers itched to send emails, he was covered head-to-toe in dust and sweat, and apparently he didn’t know how to cook, a fact that had eluded him for forty odd years.  He stumbled that first morning, half-starved, across town to the tiny grocery store hoping for—more than anything, really—a posting of take-away menus. What he got instead was the eerie sensation of every set of eyes in the place swiveling to fix on him.

  
Erwin coughed.

  
The cashier hissed to the person he was ringing out, eyes flickering unabashed from Erwin’s hair to his loafers. So Erwin stared right back at the freckly kid and bared his most polite smile.

  
“Good morning,” Erwin said.

  
And the shop erupted. Apparently new faces didn’t trip through the time warp too often.

  
He was saved from the encroaching mob by a wiry person sporting Coast Guard sweatshirt and an impressively wide grin.

  
“Erwin Smith?” they said, tugging his arm and looping a shopping basket up around the crook of his elbow. They waved off the chorus of curious, disappointed grumbles. His savior steered him through the shop, plucking some bread off a shelf. “Of _course_ you are. I can’t believe it.” Under their breath they muttered, “ _Shit_.” They didn’t sound upset about it, quite the opposite. Their familiarity left Erwin reeling, so he let himself be pushed along as the basket on his arm grew heavier.

  
_Eggs_ , he noted. _Good_. And beans, bananas. “I beg your pardon,” Erwin said. He shifted the basket along his forearm into his hand. “But do I—eh, do I know you from somewhere?” He was certain he didn’t.

  
The person vibrating enthusiasm against his side skidded to an abrupt halt, causing Erwin to stumble. They dipped around front of him and offered another wide grin. Their hair gave them quite a bit of added height, Erwin noticed. He tried not to stare. Maybe it was fashion. He _had_ seen a lot of people teasing their hair in the city recently.

  
“Fuck. My bad.” They stuck out a hand. “Hanji.”

  
Their hand was warm and calloused against Erwin’s palm.

  
“I’m Erwin,” he said, realizing his mouth was slightly slack. Their glasses were distractingly smudgy and the strings of their sweatshirt looked chewed on. So, not a fashion statement then.

  
Hanji rolled their eyes. “No shit, sherlock. Nice to meet you. Finally.” Their grin quirked up into something that crackled with savage humor and terrifying intelligence.

  
Erwin liked Hanji.

 

  
He was well on his way to genuine starvation by the time he made it home and promptly burned the eggs Hanji picked out for him. The toast was alright, though, and the jam was better than Erwin remembered.

 

 

  
He called Nile that night.

  
“Why the hell are you calling me?” Nile barked immediately upon picking up.

  
Erwin sighed and said blithely, “I miss you.” He lay on the floor of the freshly-vacuumed living room. There was a skylight that he’d forgotten about, and he’d been staring at the night sky for an hour, stomach churning with his second failed attempt at eggs. Omelettes were one of those things, he’d decided, that looked deceptively simple, but the reality was a wasteland of charred vegetables refusing to stay in their coagulating confines.

  
Nile produced remarkable harrumph.

  
“How’s the firm,” Erwin asked. “Has it crumbled to dust yet?” He held his free hand out in front of his face, idly flexing his fingers.

  
“Yeah. Went up in flames the minute you left. I’ve been pissing myself since.” Nile’s voice was dry, but Erwin sat up anyways.

  
“Really?”

  
“No. The intern’s doing great, too. I’m surprised. I kinda thought the kid would just shit himself to tell you the truth.”

  
“Oh.” Erwin flopped back down; the floor wasn’t forgiving on his spine as he went. “That’s good. Fantastic. I knew Arlert would be fine.”

  
“Erwin, is there a particular reason you called?” Erwin could imagine him gesturing for Erwin to hurry-the-fuck-up. “I said I’d get in touch if there were problems.”

  
“I can’t cook.” Erwin hadn’t meant to blurt it, but his stomach chose that moment to lurch in protest against the mess he’d eaten for dinner and it was all he could focus on.

  
“Sorry, what?”

 

“Yeah, I can’t cook, Nile. I’m probably going to die out here.” Erwin’s stomach heaved another pathetic gurgle.  He winced.

  
Nile paused. “Not to be an asshole, but why don’t you, you know, look it up online? Are you—what, are you fucking _lonely_ , Erwin?”

  
Erwin snorted around the balloon pressing against his lungs. “I just wanted to give you fair warning for when I kick the bucket.”

  
“Sure.” Nile coughed out that skeptical harrumph again. “Listen, I really have to go, Erwin. I’ve got some shit to get done tonight.” By shit he meant work, and probably a heap of it. Erwin’s stomach flipped with guilt and bad eggs and a horrible plummeting sensation.

  
“Ah damn, Nile. Of course.” Erwin scrubbed his hand up through his hair. “I can come home.”

  
“Yeah, yeah, you can do whatever the fuck you want, you grown-ass man. How about you start by looking up a cooking video, though.”

  
Erwin nearly smiled at that. “You can’t tell a soul.”

  
“Erwin, literally _no one_ thinks you can cook. You’ve brought take-away lunches to the firm for ten fucking years.”

  
“ _Shhh_.” A grin tugged at the corner of Erwin’s mouth when Nile sighed, harassed.

  
“I have to go,” Nile said, voice dry as ever. “Don’t die.”

  
“Nile.”

  
“ _What_.”

  
“Thank you.”

  
“Fuck _off_.”

  
Erwin was laughing when Nile hung up the phone. It felt good to laugh, even if his own voice echoed too loud around the cottage and the floor dug into his spine and his huffs jostled his queasy stomach.

 

 

  
He went down to the shore again that night.

  
The air in his bedroom was stuffy and Erwin couldn’t sleep. When he closed his eyes, a hundred thoughts threatened to suffocate him, so he stared blankly at the ceiling, looping through the same paths in his brain over and over. He thought about the firm until he’d gnawed the inside of his cheek bloody, checking, double-checking, triple checking his plans for the summer. Nile was fine. Arlert was fine. The firm wouldn’t crumble without him.

  
He rolled his eyes at himself. How fucking vain. _You’re a replaceable control-freak, you stupid old man_.

  
With a jolt that threatened to revive the omelette, he remembered Nile’s question. — _what, are you fucking lonely, Erwin?_

  
_Mostly just a pathetic old man_. Erwin groaned and shoved back the sheets, sick of himself.

  
He pulled on a robe, unwilling to spend another moment in that bed, and slipped out across the damp lawn and the cool sand to the edge of the tide. He sat just out of reach of the waves and rested his chin on his knees, making fists of the sand and letting it leak through his fingers. The waves dimmed the ugly chatter in his brain and he could match his breathes to the easy come and go. He stretched on his back with another groan, toes digging into the night-cool sand, and wondered why the fuck he took this vacation. Flights of fancy were as useful to him as dwelling on things he’d lost years ago.

 

Erwin woke gasping against the remnants of a freezing wave that had crashed over his face. He jerked upright so quickly his heart skipped enough beats to make him dizzy. Sand was gritty in his hair, caked to the side of his face. His limbs had long since turned icy. Erwin panted, scrambling to get his bearings while the tide lapped at his heels. He heaved himself backwards out of reach of the ocean.

  
The waves kept rolling in hushed, lulling breathes.

  
The hair on the back of Erwin’s neck bristled and he stood slowly, shaking sand from his soaked robe with ginger deliberation as he eyed the dark waves, near enough to have broken across his face on a large swell.

  
He decided not to make a habit of falling asleep next to the sea.

 

 

Erwin naturally rose with the sun and took to running barefoot along the shore all that first, helter-skelter week, unsure of what to do without a hectic morning commute. It was hard going in the sand and his cardio had deteriorated to a shadow of what it used to be, so he wheezed along with aching thighs and sweat that dripped from his nose and turned his shirt into a mess of salt and brine.

  
So he stopped wearing a shirt and his shoulders turned pink from the watery morning sun. Erwin realized with a shock that he had freckles on his shoulders. He eyed smatter with fascination in the mirror. Erwin couldn’t recall if he’d had them as a kid, as the only image he could conjure up was of his father’s weathered skin and crow’s feet. His father hadn’t had freckles.

 

 

Hanji texted him everyday since the apparent biologist saved him from the grocery store mob.

  
Sometimes it was news from the town. _The priest is a demon, Erwin. Did you know?_

  
Other times with oddly specific facts about marine biology. _Did you know black-tipped sharks can reproduce asexually? Other ones can, too, but I sure do love a black-tipped shark. If I was one, I’d definitely self-cest. What about you, would you fuck yourself, Erwin? I mean as a shark, but otherwise is cool, too. You do you, Erwin. Heh!_

  
Most frequently, though, Erwin’s phone buzzed with greetings that shivered with ecstatic congeniality.

  
_Oi! Erwin! Good morning, sunshine._

  
_Hanji. What’s up?_

  
_Nothing. Just saying hey._

  
_Oh_ , Erwin thought. At first he had paused and frowned at his phone before responding with an awkward, _Uh, hey to you, too_. But after two days of distressing fish facts, he rolled his eyes and texted back a dry: _Morning Hanji. Try not to do anything with tentacles that I wouldn’t do today. How will I manage grocery shopping if you’re indisposed?_

  
Hanji had positively cackled through their texts and, for some reason, implied that left quite an array of options wide open. _You’re alright, Smith_.

  
It was outrageously difficult, but Erwin gritted his teeth and didn’t call Nile again to ask how the firm was.

 

 

Nights that week were reserved for the sea, though. If he was being honest, Erwin was avoiding insomnia by simply refusing to get into bed until his eyes were slipping shut of their own accord. But there was also something about the way midnight by the sea felt, like there wasn’t anywhere else left in the world.

  
Erwin would stretch out on his tiny porch on the old wicker furniture, joints popping from the strain of jogging and cleaning the cottage. If he sat by the bay window, enough light flooded out into the night to illuminate the books he’d brought to read. They weren’t his father’s fairytales and crime thrillers didn’t particularly suit the atmosphere. It made his chest tighten and he thought to ask Hanji sometime about a bookstore in town. Or maybe he’d phone the storage unit where his father’s books had been collecting dust.

 

  
And that was where Erwin was at the end of the first week of his fairly subdued mid-life crisis, lounging on the porch, wrapped up in his bathrobe and sweatpants.

  
A movement amongst the waves caught his eye, and Erwin glanced over reflexively. And immediately did a double-take. A dark head bobbed just beyond the shallows. His property was private, but it wasn’t particularly well marked and he didn’t mind swimmers so long as they kept the beach clean. Maybe it was a seal; Hanji would know.

  
Silvery-wet shoulders breached the water as Erwin watched, and the figure ran their hands up through their hair. Erwin smiled and turned back to his novel, hoping they enjoyed what looked like a midnight skinny-dip. They made for a pretty silhouette and Erwin’s chest hummed pleasantly at the thought of having another person to silently while away the hours with. Solitary amongst the sleepless. He was tempted to call out to them. To shout a hello and see if the slender arms would raise in greeting.

  
Erwin looked back at the sea to do just that, but the swimmer was gone. His heart stopped and he’d thrown his book and robe to the side, taken off at a sprint across his lawn before he even had a moment to gasp a horrified breath. There had definitely been a swimmer and now there definitely _wasn’t_.

  
The water was a shock as Erwin splashed into it, stumbling through the shallows. _Why hasn't person the resurfaced?_ his head screamed over and over. The waves tugged at his sweats, threatening to yank them clean off his hips when they grew sodden.

  
By the time Erwin had sloshed up to his waist, he managed to draw a breath and heave a shout. His lungs felt like they’d been punctured and he couldn’t keep enough air in them; it kept disappearing as fast as he gulped it.

  
No one answered his shout.

  
“God fucking _dammit_ ,” Erwin growled and splashed deeper into the ocean. _Don’t you dare fucking drown_. Cold water licked at his breastbone, reached up to slap his chin. “Where the _fuck_ are you?” Erwin shouted, fear tearing his voice raw. He was absolutely certain he’d seen a swimmer, there was no mistaking those slender limbs and human shoulders. Why wasn’t there splashing, why the fuck wasn’t there splashing— _please don’t already be dead_. He pushed off the sandy bottom and launched himself into the inky waves.

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
_The present, drowning_.

 

 

Erwin hadn’t been able to find the swimmer and he realized with an icy lurch that he’d been trying to swim back to shore for a lot longer than he really should have.

  
He tried to dig his feet into the sand of the ocean floor and floundered, further out than he expected, stomach dropping when his feet kicked at nothing and his head plunged beneath the dark surface.

 

_“It’s sea monsters!” one of the fish wives insisted with a glint in her eyes._

  
_The one with a long, ropey braid of silver hair rolled her eyes. “No, no. It’s the shipwrecked dead. They envy the living, you know.”_

  
_They all grinned, with skin more delicate than it looked as their cheeks rounded like overripe fruit to expose their crooked teeth. “What do you think riptides are, Erwin?” they’d chimed._

  
_“Papa says they’re just a current in the water.”_

  
_“Your papa’s a smart man.”_

  
_The one with the long braid shuddered her old bones. “Handsome, too.” A chorus of deliciously scandalized hums echoed hers._

  
_Erwin had paused, blushing. “Maybe it’s sirens,” he blurted._

  
_The fishwives tittered, delighted, and Erwin flushed harder. He’d just finished The Odyssey and he’d been running around with a stick sword all weekend, telling riddles to his papa. He suddenly felt very foolish. Why hadn’t Papa told him he was being childish?_

  
  
The ocean still sounded like it was breathing even under the waves. Erwin opened his eyes in the murky dark and then immediately squeezed them shut against the burn of the salt water. He kicked frantically. A riptide. If it was a riptide that had gotten with swimmer, their body could already be past the cove at the end of his property. His heart squeezed at the thought of the pretty swimmer tossing like a limp rag-doll beneath the waves. Then his lungs squeezed as well, begging for air with shivering hiccups that threatened to force Erwin to suck a lungful of seawater. He kicked harder, not at all sure if he was aiming for the surface or the ocean floor. He imagined waterlogged fingers wrapping about his ankles and luminous eyes appearing out of the gloom. His lungs gave another shudder for air, this time to scream.

  
No. Wait. Wait, _wait_. Erwin stopped kicking and clawing at the water. His head was getting light and he was panicking. He opened his eyes, trying to find a glimmer of moonlight through the murky burn of the seawater, but the riptide slammed into him relentlessly and he thought he was going to be sick, that his lungs would burst.

  
Frigid fingers gripped his shoulders and _yanked_ and his lungs finally gave out. Erwin screamed and screamed, streams of bubbles erupting from his mouth. Just as he was about to inhale as much water as he could manage to vomit out another scream, his head broke the surface and someone was shouting loud enough to drown out his own raw voice.

  
The air felt so good in his lungs that Erwin thought it was entirely likely he’d piss from flood of relief and oxygen singing through his veins. He gasped and struggled against the steely arms wrapped about his waist.

  
“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you!” the shout came again, barked right against Erwin’s ear. The grip tightened around Erwin’s waist, pressing Erwin’s bare chest to a distressingly cold one. Erwin forced his eyes open and panted more hitching gasps—and god, _fuck_ they felt good. His vision was blurry, but he registered dark hair dripping into wide silver eyes too close to his own. And the firm chest against his shivering one. The pretty swimmer.

  
“You’re alright,” Erwin sighed and went limp, vision wavering with little black speckles. “There’s something touching my legs,” he rasped, moving his feet away from the thing brushing at his toes. His head fell forward against the stranger’s shoulder. Something tickled his cheek and made him scrunch his nose, but rocking waves were soothing and he wanted to sleep. Except he couldn’t because there was something by his ankles.

  
The stranger gave him a rough shake, wrapped fingers in Erwin’s hair and yanked his head back. “I said, what the flying fuck is wrong with you?” the stranger hissed.

  
“I was trying to save you,” Erwin huffed. Something brushed his legs again and his heart went into overdrive. He swallowed a shout and tried to think of a way to alert the person holding him afloat without alarming him. He brought his hands up to grip the stranger’s shoulders. They were as distressingly cool as the rest of him and he flinched slightly under Erwin’s palms. Erwin stared at his silvery eyes with his own wide ones.  He took a breath and said, in a rather shaky version of the voice he used on clients, “Listen, we’ve got to get back to shore. I—I think you might have hypothermia. Possibly. And please don’t panic, but something keeps brushing my legs.  It's probably seaweed...”  A little hiccup of fear stopped his speech for a moment. “I’m trying not to shit myself,” he added with a lopsided attempt at a grin. His mind was spinning. The shore was too far away for Erwin’s liking. He didn’t know how the slight swimmer was holding him up, but he didn’t want to trust the strength of those limbs to last.

  
The stranger stared at him, eyes narrowing. His mouth worked for a moment before he snarled, “Seriously, what’s wrong with you?” His syllables carried drawl Erwin didn’t recognize and he had an odd voice that reminded Erwin of whisky and pebbles worn smooth by the tide.

  
“Too many fairytales as a kid.” Erwin took a shuddering breath and tried not to rest his head against those sturdy shoulders again. He really didn’t want a chunk taken out of his leg after just being rescued.

  
The stranger’s face tightened, and something thick and heavy like an over-muscled python wrapped around Erwin’s legs, halting his flailed kicks. Erwin’s heart stopped. He held perfectly still, fight or flight dissolving into paralysis. Frigid, clawed fingers gripped his jaw and held him steady. The stranger glared at Erwin and curled his lips back. Erwin noticed several things in rapid succession that made his already hazy head spin.

  
Sharp teeth, far too sharp. And above too-wide lips, above a delicate, upturned nose, quicksilver irises bore elliptical pupils that Erwin wasn’t sure how he’d missed. The tips of ears a shade too pointed poked out of dark hair. But loudest and most dreadful thing ringing in his head was that he still found the stranger frighteningly beautiful.

  
“Breathe,” the creature barked at Erwin, clicking his sharp teeth with irritation. Moonlight caught at something on his neck. Gills. _Gills_ fluttered open and closed, glistening bright in the cold light. So that’s what had tickled Erwin's cheek.

  
Erwin dug his fingers into the creature’s shoulders in his shock and sucked a massive breath, shuddering. His shiver made the creature snarl a bit wider. Erwin opened his mouth, unsure of what he was going to say, but the creature growled, “ _Don’t_ ,” and hauled him off towards the shore with an arm wrapped too-tight about Erwin’s chest. The water pressed back hard against them, belying how fast the creature was swimming, and keeping his head somewhat above the waves was the only clear thing left in Erwin’s mind through the mounting hysteria and the repetition of the phrase _holy fucking shit_ over and over til he rasped it aloud, and then snorted and hiccuped an ugly giggle, choking a bit on seawater.

  
The stranger growled at him. “ _What_ is so funny. You almost just died, idiot.” Erwin realized he was still clinging to muscular shoulders and the creature was using his tail alone to propel them along. Holy fucking shit.

  
Sand scrapped Erwin’s legs in the shallows. The stranger released his grip, shaking free of Erwin’s hands, and shoved him towards shore. He growled again as he jerked away. “Get into the house.”

  
Erwin crawled through the shallow water. His arms and legs shivered violently, though, and he collapsed in the sand with his legs still tangling with the tide. He rolled onto his back and shoved himself upright to look at the beautiful _something_ that had dragged him to shore. The word "mermaid" tugged at his mind.

  
“ _Go_ or I swear to fuck I will drag you back out and drown you.” The creature pushed up on his hands, crouched low over the water. Something rippled and broke the surface behind him. Erwin stared, awed. He couldn’t move. Those wide silvery eyes had narrowed with fury, dark hair was slicked back from his scalp, seal-sleek, and his lips pulled back to expose sharp teeth on a feral snarl. But Erwin didn’t _want_ to move; he was terrified that he would never see anything so fantastic again in his life and when he walked away, he was certain the creature would slip back into the inky sea without even a ripple.

  
The growl reverberated louder, shaking the creature’s slender frame. Spines rose along his vertebrae, from his waist to his shoulder blades, to form a razor-thin black dorsal fin tipped with deadly spikes. There was hardly a moment for Erwin to register the threat before the creature lunged for his bare feet, jaws snapping.

  
Erwin’s heart stuttered and he gritted his teeth so hard they ached in an effort to stand his ground. The creature stopped just short of his flesh, dragging a rushing wave along with his rolling body. When the water receded, the creature vibrated irritation all across his pale shoulders. It traveled down his spine and shivering dorsal fin, heaved at his tapered waist where it bled seamlessly into slippery-shiny black scales.

  
“Get out of here,” he sighed.

  
The sigh moved Erwin more than the threat of impossibly sharp teeth. He nodded, then dragged his shaking body to stand clear of the water. “Thank you,” he said, but his voice seemed lost somewhere out to sea and he could only manage a whisper.

  
The creature seemed to catch his words, though, as he rolled his luminous eyes. “You’re a stupid human, is all.” His voice tumbled low like rocks at the bottom of a river. “And apparently shit at listening. Leave.”

  
Erwin realized he had dug his toes firmly into the damp sand, ogling the creature with no intention to move anytime before dawn— and even then he knew he wouldn’t want to tear himself away. Erwin raised his brows helplessly. The creature was still propped up out of the water on his hands, arms flexing and tensing, back arched in a threat, but the growl had ceased wracking his frame and his eyes were lidded with what looked like very tired, very human resignation. His dorsal fin had begun to droop back against his spine as the corners of his sharp mouth pulled down.

  
Hundreds of questions battered at the inside of Erwin’s skull, but he shut his mouth tight against them, sealed his lips against a request to see the beautiful stranger again, swallowing it back to reside in the glass balloon in his chest. Instead, he knelt in the sand and dipped his head. He cleared his throat and said again, “Thank you.”

  
Something like a cough slipped out of the creature’s throat. Erwin’s head shot up and he caught sight of a dripping black tail rolling up out of the water and flicking through the air before dipping back into the shallows.

  
“It’s not the eighteen-hundreds anymore,” the creature grumbled. “Stop embarrassing yourself.” A sharp tooth caught at his lower lip and remained stuck outside of his mouth. _A snaggletooth_ , a fishwife tittered in Erwin’s head.

  
Erwin was about to point it out, still kneeling in the sand a few feet away, when the creature tensed, giving Erwin a heartbeat’s worth of a warning before he was showered with a heavy plume of seawater.

  
He sputtered and scrubbed at his eyes. When he opened them, the lovely stranger was gone, the sea stretching on in peaceful ripples, hiding riptides and slender creatures with tails out of a fairytale.

 

  
Erwin didn’t sleep until dawn and when he did it was accidental. He jerked awake just an hour after passing out with a fuzzy mouth and gritty eyes. Sweat from the morning sun matted his hair and his neck ached from dozing at an uncomfortable angle in that chair on his porch beside his abandoned novel.

  
His hands shook in the shower. He’d be certain he’d hallucinated if his ribs weren’t faintly bruised and his throat still ached from the shouting and the seawater.

  
Erwin pressed palms to his eyes as he leaned against the tiles until stars burst behind his eyelids. He wanted to see the creature again so badly he thought he’d go mad with it. He thought he might weep. It had kept him up for hours after he nearly drowned, spinning round and round in his head til he was drunk with the want of it. Erwin nearly hurried back to the tide a hundred times over, and had to force himself to remain on his porch, eyes fixed on the rolling waves until his aching eyes slipped shut against his will.

  
_I like the ones about mermaids_.

  
Erwin groaned and yanked the tap off.

 

In the kitchen while coffee brewed, he carefully—painfully slowly so as to ease the tremors in his fingers—made a list of things he longed to ask the creature. It was somehow cathartic and maddening at once.

  
Then he made his way across the lawn on wobbly knees, housing a glass balloon fit to burst in his bruised chest, with an over-sugared mug of coffee between his palms. When Erwin stood at the edge of the beach with his toes in the water, he sighed. The water was calm as ever. The disappointment in his belly ached more than his mottled ribs.

  
“Where’s mine?”

  
Erwin yelped and sloshed hot coffee onto his hands and into the sea. His head whipped around and there was the lovely stranger, stretched lazily in the shallows to Erwin's right, head resting on his arms. Erwin glanced frantically about the beach, but there was no one around; there never was.

  
“That’s not really what I meant.” The creature tilted his head, regarding the coffee darkening the shallows. “You look like shit.”

  
“You’re back.”

  
“Mmm.” He sounded bored. “Had to make sure you didn’t try to drown yourself again. I don’t want your rotting ass where I live.”

  
Erwin thumped down to sit on the sand, giving himself a bruised tailbone to match his ribs. His mug fell from his hands. It spilled all over the sand.

  
“Ah—” The creature paused and his mouth worked before he continued slowly, “your coffee.” The creature lifted very slender, very webbed fingers to gesture at Erwin’s ruined coffee.

  
“Fuck my coffee.” Erwin’s heart thumped so hard and heavy he was having trouble seeing. The creature pushed himself up and regarded Erwin quietly with his unsettling silvery eyes. _You shouldn’t exist_ , Erwin thought.

  
The creature huffed. “Well, guess you aren’t dead.” He shifted and heaved his body sideways, getting ready to roll back into the sea like Erwin had seen seals do at an aquarium a lifetime ago. He kept wary eyes fixed on Erwin as he did so.

  
The shout that tore out of Erwin’s throat was entirely involuntary. “ _No!_ ”

  
The creature froze, bristling. His dorsal fin rose like hackles.

  
“No, please. Stay please." Erwin's voice skidded into begging.

  
The creature sighed. “Humans are a pain in the goddamn ass.”

  
“Like you’d even know,” Erwin blurted, staring at the curve where his waist turned to scales.

  
The creature blinked and turned his head away. His tail rolled up out of the shallows and flicked through the air like a cat’s. “Oh, and you do?”

  
Erwin barked a surprised laugh. The creature seemed pleased with himself as his dorsal fin smoothed back down and his tail rolled through the air again, scattering water droplets. His scales were black, but they flashed silvery in the sunlight like his eyes. He had another smaller—though no less deadly-looking—dorsal fin a short distance up from his caudal fin, which seemed to be designed to flick side to side like shark’s rather than a mammal’s. Erwin was aflame with fascination. His brain buzzed.

  
The creature ignored Erwin’s blatant staring and gazed off down the beach, resting his chin in webbed hands. “Why would I stick around to be your—” he paused again. Erwin’s fingers twitched for his notebook as he realized the creature was having trouble finding the right vocabulary. Then wide silver eyes swung to rest on Erwin and the creature finished, “to be your experiment.”

  
Erwin felt a rush of sick shame. His lips parted on an excuse, but he couldn’t even begin.

  
The creature snorted derisively. He pushed himself sideways into slightly deeper water.

  
“Wait,” Erwin said again, leaning forward in the sand. The creature’s jaw clicked audibly, a low rumble building in his chest. But Erwin didn’t want to keep calling him creature in his head. Not after that jab. “What’s your name?”

  
The creature didn’t look surprised by the question, though he paused for several long beats, glancing off to the side with a frown, and Erwin thought he might not answer. “Levi,” he finally said with a curt nod, to Erwin's surprise. “Now you owe me yours, fuckface.” He glared defiantly at Erwin like it was a rule.  Maybe for his kind it was.

  
Levi. _Levi_ could hurl the insult _fuckface_ , but struggled to put a name to coffee. How brilliantly, how incandescently perfect. Erwin thought he might burst. The balloon shattered, imploded in Erwin’s chest, and he could finally gulp full breaths again, so he tossed his head back and laughed until his cheeks were damp and he thought he might vomit. He laid on his back in the sand next to Levi—whatever the fuck he even was—and snorted.

  
_Well damn, Dad. I bet you’d like this story, too_.

  
Erwin wrapped an arm around his sore stomach and rolled to his side to look at Levi, who hunched over with a scowl, unsettled by Erwin’s messy braying. Tears dripped over the bridge of Erwin’s nose into the sand. He coughed another watery laugh and grinned at the tense creature. “I’m Erwin.”

  
“You’re fucking weird,” Levi muttered.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm also working on a selkie!erwin story... I sure do love a creature fic... In fact, I think I love them almost as much as I do unnecessary italics and commas.
> 
> Is my deep, rabid affection for Hanji palpable?? Best trio, best trio, best-

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always late to the party! But I did manage to drag my sorry ass to Mermay so... n i c e :D
> 
> I've got three parts planned to this little fic. I'm working on part ii rn, and I have a sinking suspicion that they'll be a fair bit longer than this chapter, but I'm not positive.


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